I'm not sure many of you will like this idea, but I got oc7ober's blessing and she's the only one who threatens me physical harm so…

Basically, I know I'm a huge outlier, but I never liked "Now What?" I thought the episode was awkward and not "them" and saved all the good intense emotional stuff for the end (though I enjoyed the occasional post-coital falling on the bed shot). So I am writing my version of what I think would have happened after "Help Me" (where this fic starts) in probably about three chapters: the beginning, the middle, and the end of that transition into a relationship. (Not the "end" of the relationship, but the end of them moving fully into it.)

So you've been warned. If you loved "Now What?" and watched it eight zillion times, you might want to stop now.

For the second time, I'm posting an incomplete fic. I'll get to the other chapters as quickly as I can, but I am finishing up at school and, sadly, that takes priority. Thanks, always, for reading.

[H] [H] [H]

"I'm stuck, House… I keep wanting to move forward. I keep… wanting to move on and I can't. I'm in my new house with my new fiancé and all I can think about is you." Cuddy took in a breath. "I just need to know if you and I can work."

House was staring at her with a look of shock the whole time she spoke, and now his expression slowly dissolved to one of thoughtfulness. "You think I can fix myself?"

Cuddy shook her head slightly, saying "I don't know."

He swallowed, then said aloud what they both knew. "Cuz I am the most screwed up person in the world." Then he looked at her with wide, hopeful eyes.

"I know," Cuddy said calmly. Then "I love you." She choked up after saying it, both with relief from unburdening herself with her confession, and with the slight panic that she had done so. She swallowed the lump in her throat and offered even more honesty. "I wish I didn't." She laughed a little. "But I can't help it."

House, his mind still reeling with this new information, moved to get up and immediately requested her help, since his screaming leg made his attempt futile. He recognized the foreshadowing this moment offered. There would be no template for them. He wasn't able to take care of her and carry her through life. He was too emotionally and physically damaged for that. She, in fact, would need to reach her hand out to him time after time. And she was here because she was too preoccupied with him to move on, too in love to pretend she wasn't. But she wished it were different. She wished the love weren't so. This wasn't a rom-com, a romance novel, or anything so clean and beautiful. Their love was gnarled and ancient. But in the twisted nature of it, there were nooks that held their secrets, and twists that kept them linked. And he wondered if that would be enough. As she pulled him up and he stepped to her, moving his body slowly closer, he wondered if maybe, just maybe, the way their love had manifested – through obsession and hurt and dysfunction and avoidance – might have somehow made it stronger. He wondered if maybe he wouldn't get hurt.

This is what he told himself as he leaned in and kissed her. Every cell in his body ignited when his lips met hers. When she kissed him back he was convinced this was the exact right thing to do, despite the nagging voice that warned him to batten down the hatches and sail away quickly. That voice was a coward. That voice was always afraid of happiness.

Still, it was loud and persistent. So House pulled away a little and studied her. "How do I know I'm not hallucinating?"

Cuddy smiled softly at his analytic expression. "Did you take the Vicodin?"

He looked down at his outstretched palm, with two of his other lovers gleaming white and simple in the dawn light. "No."

"Then I think we're okay." She smiled still.

House gave her a sideways grin and replied "Yeah," as he tossed the Vicodin onto the tile floor. He kissed her deeply this time and found her hand, holding on for dear life. They kissed there forever, Cuddy smiling between kisses and House's brain arguing with itself. Do this. You want this. You've always wanted this. These thoughts were winning, but threaded throughout were still the more cautious thoughts. This is never going to work. You're not ready. She's not ready. And if you do this now, you won't get another chance.

Something about her smiling, though, and her warm mouth against his, and the way she held his hand… he crossed over into another place. He was hopeful, and he hadn't been that in a long, long time and it felt really, really good. It felt as good as her skin did beneath his palm when he slid his hand around her waist. When she pushed his jacket from his shoulders and the weight of the leather flopped to the floor, he tried to force his fears to go with it, to shirk them off. He told himself that Cuddy was usually right about stuff like this and that he'd be okay.

He was in a weird moment, aside from his fear of being happy, because he'd fantasized about her sexually since the day he met her, and he'd fantasized about her emotionally for a long time too. But the two fantasies didn't often meet. Banging her on her desk rarely wove together with the different ways he'd mentally professed his love. Maybe he'd done that on purpose because now, with their love and their desire mixing, he was almost light-headed. He was touching her, kissing her. And she loved him. Had loved him for a while. It was almost too much. So when she said "We have to re-bandage your shoulder," in response to dots of blood seeping onto his tee shirt, it was almost a welcome interruption. He was drowning in her and it was a chance to come up for air.

He nodded. He knew he had to go grab the medical kit, but he was afraid. He was scared if he stepped away, if he broke the spell she was under, her logical mind would be jarred back to reality and she'd take it all back.

But she loved him. She'd said so. She couldn't take that back, right?

So he stepped away from her, to a hall closet and retrieved a box with bandages and various other supplies. He came back and handed it to her, then kicked down the toilet lid and sat. She smirked at him. "You have to take your shirt off."

He smirked back. "You have to take your shirt off." They stared at each other, giddy with this thing they had started. "Oh, sorry, I thought you were playing a game." He reached back and grabbed the shirt along his shoulder blades and tugged it forward over his head. He wasn't worried about how he looked, dusty and tired and bloody. His broken body was never his way of getting to her, he knew.

But to his surprise, it must have had some effect on her because she straddled his lap, grinning mischievously and kissing him lightly. His hands reached for her hips instinctually, despite the awkward plastic box of medical supplies between them. She sighed against his mouth, but pulled back and looked at his shoulder, her brow furrowing as she put her "doctor hat" back on. She peeled back the tape, glancing at his face to see if it hurt, but he was stoic, staring into space over her shoulder. When she had fully removed the bandage she evaluated, "This looks pretty bad."

"Always what the half-naked person wants to hear."

She grinned at him. "The wound, idiot." She pulled some gauze from the box and gently began cleaning the cut. "I think we need to suture it after all."

House turned his head, trying to see for himself, but its location made that impossible, so he had to rely on her judgment. "Okay." She smiled at him for some reason he didn't understand. "You're excited by this, you sadist?" he teased.

"No."

"Then why are you grinning like that?"

She shrugged. "I dunno." She got up and went to the sink to wash her hands well. "I'm just happy."

"I'm wounded and bleeding and trapped with an administrator and you're happy." He couldn't help it. He loved teasing her. He was basically ten years old.

She came back without a word, still grinning, and returned to her place on his lap, where he'd felt her absence acutely. He watched her wink an eye shut to thread the needle, grab another square of gauze, then look at him wickedly. "Watch me administrate," she said, and House felt her push the needle through his skin.

"Dammit, woman." He said, but without any tone of pain. This was really nothing compared to what he dealt with. "There's lidocaine in there somewhere."

"Oh, this is nothing compared to what you deal with," she replied, concentrating on the stitches. He grinned at all she knew. Cuddy finished putting in a half dozen sutures and made a little clucking noise of satisfaction. Then she reached for the tiny scissors, cut the thread, and dabbed the wound again with gauze. She applied some antibiotic cream and smoothed on a new bandage, proclaiming the job "Done!"

"Thank you," he said in a low, gruff voice.

She looked in his eyes. "You're welcome."

The business was attended to and she was still on his lap and their bodies were aware. They were just sitting there, looking at each other, but their breathing was getting quick and shallow. House took the stupid plastic box from between them and set it on the floor with a thud. Then he took his hands and pulled her closer, scooting her along his lap. It was in doing this that he realized she had her weight on the ball of her right foot, leaning the pressure that way, off of his thigh. It was then that he loved her a little bit more. It was then that the fear returned.

Their faces were nearly level in this position, so Cuddy only had to tip up a little to study his expression, which was inscrutable. "What's wrong?" she asked him, feeling the heat of his bare chest warm her through her scrub top. He shook his head, dismissing her question, but she knew something was bothering him. "What is it?" she probed again.

House looked at her and offered his own bathroom admission now. "I have fought against this for a long time. I mean, against wanting this… I've worked really hard to try to let you go."

It hung there. The years of work they had both done trying to wall off this possibility, turning it into an abscess that was doing neither of them any good.

"Don't let me go," she told him, cupping his face in her small hands. "Let's go."

And she kissed him and the kiss immediately caught fire and became the first step down a passionate road to surrender. They were letting this happen. It was happening. It had already happened. She reached down and pulled her own shirt over her head when she realized he was still being cautious, hesitant. Something about that move, though, reassured him and then he wasted no time smothering her skin with his hands, with his mouth. He unhooked her bra and tossed it somewhere, his hands splaying across her back, urging her to lean into them to give his mouth access to her breasts. She moaned with abandon as his tongue slid across her nipple. One of his hands slid up her back and into her hair, and when she leaned into it, he kissed along her neck, his stubble scratching her lightly, just as she'd always remembered.

She tasted incredible. Even through the dust and grime of the day's horror, he tasted the salt and sweetness of her skin. As if reading his mind she suddenly protested, "We're filthy." He ignored her, his mouth moving down to her other breast. God, putting his mouth on her was like oxygen at this point. "House," she whispered again, but it ended in another moan. "I'm serious. We're so gross."

He looked up at her with teasing eyes. "I'll just kiss whatever was covered in clothing," he promised, returning his attention to her breasts. She acquiesced quite easily after that. I mean, fuck it, right? Making love for the first time in thirty years with grimy beaten-up bodies in a bathroom scattered with broken glass… it didn't get much more appropriate, metaphorically.

So when he shifted and lowered her to the floor, her bare back shocked by the cool tiles, she wasn't disappointed. She didn't come to him for silk sheets and roses. She came to him for the primal connection that they had, through every triumph and tragedy. She came to him for him, in whatever state that might be.

As he began sliding her pants off, kissing her stomach and the line of her panties along the way, she felt something hard on the back of her head and reached to remove it. She looked at it through half closed eyes because his fingers were inside of her now and she was delirious with need. It was one of the Vicodin. She turned it over and over in her fingers, working out her worries while he brought her closer to orgasm. She closed her fist around the pill when she felt his mouth on her sex, opening her with his tongue. His hands spread her thighs further for him and she thought she might come right then, but she fought it. Sometimes resisting, making it take longer, made it better.

Instead she gasped "House" into the silent bathroom, even the whisper reverberating off the walls and reverberating in his head. All he wanted right now was to give her pleasure, and to have her associate that with him. If he did that enough, it would start to crowd out all of the other associations and he'd satisfy her and be enough for her and she'd be happy with him. So as much as the taste of her and the smell of her and the feeling of her between his lips was making it hard for him to not climb back up her body and take her, he was motivated by something bigger than lust.

He felt her back arch as his tongue slid along the length of her sex, and he slid a hand to the small of her back. He felt her hold her breath when he closed his lips over her clit and he groaned, telling her he wanted this as much as she did. He felt her thighs tense, taut as stretched rubber bands, when he circled her gently with his tongue, and he slid his other hand to her sex too, entering her with his fingers. Cuddy was crying out now, whimpering and telling him not to stop and it was the hottest thing he had ever heard. When he sucked gently on her she was done and her hand clawed at his hair and she screamed his name and told him she was coming (as if that weren't clear) and he didn't stop or change a thing and it went on forever and he knew he'd never forget her saying three things from that night:

"All I can think about is you."

"I love you."

and

"God, House, I'm coming."

He could die a happy man, he thought.

When he could tell it was ebbing and he was too much, he stopped, kissing all around her, rubbing his face slowly along her thigh, crawling carefully up her body, which was gorgeous and sprawled on the cold tile floor. Her face was turned to the side and she was catching her breath. He settled his body over hers and saw her open palm, near her face, with a Vicodin lying in it. He waited.

Cuddy turned to him eventually, and smiled up at him. She went to stroke his face with her hand and the forgotten pill clicked across the floor. She followed the sound with her eyes. "Are you okay?" she asked him, the pill reminding her of his state not an hour earlier.

He studied her worried face and confessed "No." Then he propped on an elbow and ran his fingers over the features of her face. Along the bridge of her nose. Down the curve of her jaw. Over her eyelids, which closed to his touch. "Is that okay?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yeah." She wanted it to be.

"I mean, I'm fine with the whole building-falling-on-me-patient-dying thing," he said, trying to diffuse the intensity. "I'm just so aroused it's crossed from fun to painful."

She grinned at his deflection and joined him in it, equally scared of the serious stuff they were towing along behind them on this journey. "Well, that kind of trouble I think I can help you with." She wrapped her legs around his waist and began fumbling around with his belt. When she'd undone it, he helped her kick his legs free of his jeans. She wasted no time removing his boxers, getting him naked against her. He was kissing her neck and face, his hands sliding all over her body. She felt his cock pushing against her sex, filling her with the anticipation of feeling him inside her. Then he propped on his arms and looked down at her. "I love you, Cuddy… I think I forgot to say that out loud." She felt a pang in her heart that almost brought her to tears. So thank God his next words were "What with all the blood rushing to my penis." She laughed. She slid her feet along the length of his legs, urging him to get this thing going.

"You comfortable?" he asked, with a grin. "Anything I can do for you?"

She was tired of his teasing and retorted "Well, this tile floor is pretty cold," as she shoved him gently to flip him onto his back. He sucked air through his teeth as his skin made contact with the floor, then exhaled it with relief when Cuddy sank down on him the next moment. He smiled, his eyes closed, head lolled back a little. She felt each of his fingers where they gripped her hips.

"You comfortable?" she echoed, grinning naughtily. "Anything I can do for you?"

House opened his eyes and stared at her body, taking in the sight of Cuddy, naked, riding him on his bathroom floor. "You're doing it," he exhaled.

Cuddy's hands were resting lightly on his stomach as she rolled her hips over his. She felt every inch of him as he entered and left her, and knew she always would. The delicious thing about him leaving was knowing he'd come back, his absence only making his arrival all the more appreciated. She fucked him slow and deep like this, sighing and moaning with every stroke of his length against her. She squeezed her muscles around him and he groaned, still staring at her through half-closed eyes, watching her breasts bounce with the movement of her body, watching her bite her lip as she let him inside her. He was going to have stroke. He was sure of it. She was slowly killing him. When she whispered, "I think about this all the time," he swore he felt the aneurism burst in his brain.

But if he died, she was coming with him, he decided, slipping his thumb over her clit and putting pressure against her each time she slid down on him. Her sighs turned to moans, animalistic and pleading. Very quickly, the slow fucking they were both enjoying was nowhere near enough, and Cuddy fell to her hands over him, pushing her hips down on him over and over, the entering blending with the leaving. He kept his hand where it was, stroking her clit as she moved over him, craning to taste neck and breast, whatever he could reach. But then she cried out and her sex spasmed around him and he dropped his head back on the tile, overcome. He groaned and exhaled and said things he didn't remember that had words like "yes" and "always" and "more" because he was greedy for her. He felt her body still over him, but he was still coming and saying her name and her mouth was lazily against his and it was like he was letting go of all the hesitation he had left and all that remained was pleasure and Cuddy's skin, and Cuddy's husky voice moaning in his ear.

When he finally came to rest under her, and she laid her head on his rising chest, he felt a deep peace and a deep exhaustion. He traced the lines of her form with his fingertips and fought sleep. He had almost crossed over to dreamland when her voice roused him.

"I'm too tired to clean the glass out of your tub - You do realize what a ridiculous sentence that is, right? – so let's just go to bed and deal with it tomorrow." He grunted his agreement and she stood up. He lay on the floor and looked up at her and she was so beautiful, even dirty and with red, puffy eyes. She looked down at him while rubbing an eye with the back of her hand.

"I'll never stop," he blurted out before he chickened out because he knew she'd like to hear it. "I'll always love you."

Cuddy smiled. "I know."

"How do you know?"

"Because you told me while you were having an orgasm." She smirked at him.

"You're not supposed to take stuff I say then very seriously," he warned.

"Oh, okay, Good to know. So next time I will stop when you moan for me not to."

He grinned at her a little sheepishly. "Just take it all with a grain of salt," he amended.

"That's how I always take you," she replied, holding out a hand to help pull him up. They walked to his bed and crawled in. Cuddy rolled her back to him and scooted right up against his body like they did this all the time. He spread his hand over her stomach and listened to her breathing, and in spite of the sex, that was the moment he felt closest to her. And, like a drug, he wanted it all the time.